I opened my eye.
“What did I do when you used it?”
“You complained.”
“And after that?”
“You found me.”
“Every time?”
“Nearly.”
“What happened when I didn’t?”
“I came looking for you.”
The simplicity of it hurt more than a dramatic declaration would have.
My thumb moved over his knuckle.
“What if I never remember the first time you called me?”
“Then this becomes the first time that matters.”
Reid said things like that.
Not polished promises.
Not assurances that the doctors were wrong or that the missing years would magically return.
He gave me room to stand inside the loss without pretending it was small.
I understood why I had loved him.
The realization arrived without ceremony.
It was not memory.
It was evidence.
I looked at him and thought, Of course.
Of course the man who survived Denver had fallen for someone who asked permission before touching him, even after years of sharing a bed.
Of course I had chosen a man who did not tell me what I felt.
A man who let anger exist without trying to cure it.
A man who continued showing up when I had nothing to give him except a trust I could not explain.
“I want to ask you something.”
“Ask.”
“What did I love about you?”
His expression shifted. “That is difficult to answer without sounding unbearably pleased with myself.”
